Girl Scouts? Good or Evil....you decide.

Lounge
1

A friend of mine has a sister who is a Girl Scout, and her mother is a troop leader.

One day I was looking through all her scouting information with my friend. I noticed that 80% of it was about cookies and the rest was pointless functions with lack of agenda and goals.

I instantly viewed this as horrific being a former Boy Scout. We went out camping, did community service on a regular basis, built nature trails, build a running path through the woods behind our areas high school for the cross country team, and had meating with mass event where we would socialize and learn skills and morals to take with us throughout our lives. We had something major every 2 to 3 weeks, with a yearly trip to locations around the US and one to Canada for a week long 100 mile canoeing trip in a remote area. We learned to be self sufficient.

I checked out the Girl Scout web site and found little information except cookie propoganda plastered everywhere and a couple articals on how the organization trys to help girls grow in life, which is contradictory to a year long schedule of events for an actual troop in the same area where I was a scout.

EDIT They do have a few national community service programs, such as literacy, but they have people read to dogs!!! Yep that’s right, Dogs. Dogs don’t put social pressure on people who are attempting to read to a group, and there is not confusion or stresses when trying to teach a second language (such as english for some). Who thought of that?!

I have a great idea! Lets read to dogs! End

All they do is Sell Cookies, and meet up to socialize while talking/planning to sell cookies. My friend even admited (as she is a former girl scout) that all they did was sell cookies, and once in great while they would do something like reading to old people in nursing homes.

Hit the streets and pick up trash. That’s what community service is; improving your community, not entertaining the elderly.

I’d like to change the firt pole option and remove the gender part, but it won’t let me. That point is for a different conversation, and not related to the function of the girlscouts.

2

Hey!! I was a girl scout . . .

Granted, I was about 6, but I believe it helped build my moral character as I helped build their global empire by selling cookies.

Or something.

And no, I don’t still have the uniform. :wink:

xoxo
jp

ps DOGS ARE PEOPLE TOO!! . . .

. . . wait . . .

3

I’m glad you recieved something positive for you sales work :slight_smile:

As for the uniform. That’s very very wrong…a little kiny in a good way.

Boy Scout fantasy #1 A camp of Girl Scouts beside them.
That happened one time, and the scout masteres wouldn’t even let up associate with them. :frowning: We did show them how to build a fire. They were trying to light the top and wondered why it kept burning out. HAHAHA lmao.

4

Well i dunno - i was a girl scout for a year or so (just long enough to go camping). We learned a bunch of stuff. you have to work on badsges and what not like the guys do. Orienteering, sewing, making a fire, swimming, skiing, etc.

It may have changed now tho. I can’t really say.

incidentally - that way camp worked - if you sold enough cookies you could go, and if you sold specific amounts of cookies above and beyond the target, you could get a discount on the fees.

it’s odd that they would be so cookie-centric tho, considering they only sell them once a year.

5

Do girl scouts have quotas? Are they expected to get their cookies off the shelf or else?

Toil: I was really looking forward to ticking off the truly “evil” poll option, and I was very disappointed to see there wasn’t one.

6

no not quotas. but you do get rewards for meeting certain goals. or rather you did back then.

7

I’d add it, but I can’t edit the poll :frowning: I guess that’s a good thing though.

8

I’ll be honest: I don’t really remember. I think we recited some moto before each meeting (obviously it had a big impact), and I know we had to do stuff to earn badges (sewing, cooking . . . ya know, pre-feminist kind of challenges).

I can state with complete confidence however that I do know how to build a fire!

You get a bunch of wet wood and throw a match on it, right? :wink:

xoxo
jp

9

That’s exaclty how to build a fire. Wood soaked in fuel and a match. You might want to stand back :stuck_out_tongue:

10

Ahaha. Oh trust me, I will. Never stand too close to a fire.

11

Or to other guys when you’re taken and you’re wearing LAM.

Learned that the hard way. Sheesh. :wink:

xoxo
jp

12

“These young girls improve our society and sell cookies to fund their good deads.”

EVIL :angry:
EVIL

The cookies contain hydrogenated oils, that causes heart disease.

13

So girlscouts are slowly killing people? HAHAHa That’s even better. (or worse)

14

The girl scouts rule dude!

15

Girl Scouts used to do more than sell cookies and it’s disturbing to think that it may have become more purely a child exploitation enterprise - on the other hand, no doubt it’s the parents doing all the high-pressure selling since it’s not safe to send your kid door-to-door anymore.

Even bigger than Girl Scout cookies though is the whole fund-raising for the schools trip - kids (and when I say kids, I mean their parents) are pressured to sell crap - mostly candy - to pay for stuff that our taxes should be paying for.

16

i agree. and the candy is usually crappy too.

17

I don’t know about your candy, but the chocolate bars for the spanish department at my highschool are baller. The best i’ve ever tasted.

18

I agree. It’s frustrating to have kids come to your door, begging for you to buy cookies, and you already bought two boxes from the last girl who came to your door, and two more from the little girl before her . . .

Eventually you have to say no, and then you feel bad as you watch her walk away dejectedly, knowing she is about to lose her opportunity to go on the special ‘trip’ with her friends cause you were too mean to buy a stupid overpriced box of cookies . . .

And don’t even get me started on school fundrasiers.

Stop the insanity!

jp

19

Well there’s a real easy fix to that JP, just add yourself to the national sex crimes registry. Everybody stops coming to the door. It does cause some problems with the neighbors.

Seriously though how do you contain yourself to just two boxes. I buy them by the case load. Not kidding by the case!

20

And it gets worse and worse every year…my son’s school has 2-3 fund raisers per school year. Ridiculous…